Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
ISSN
0041-9494
Publisher
University of Chicago Law School
Language
en-us
Abstract
If you conduct an online search for something like “Justice Scalia’s most important opinions” or “Justice Scalia’s most influential opinions,” you will (or at least I did) almost always end up with a list that is top-heavy with dissents. That is not surprising. Dissenting opinions gave Justice Antonin Scalia the most freedom to exercise his considerable skills as a writer and were therefore more likely to produce memorable one-liners. They were also the best occasions for him to express his views candidly and forcefully and thus served as the best vehicles for elaboration of his jurisprudential and doctrinal positions. Majority opinions need four other justices to sign on, and while finding four justices to share Scalia’s outlook was a dream to some, the Court in his time never approached that ideal. Indeed, the only majority opinion that seems to pop up with any consistency in these “best of” lists is District of Columbia v Heller.
Recommended Citation
Gary S. Lawson,
Confronting Crawford: Justice Scalia, the Judicial Method, and the Adjudicative Limits of Originalism
,
84
University of Chicago Law Review
2265
(2017).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/269
Please note the file available on SSRN may not be the final published version of this work.
